hashgen - the blazingly fast hash generator

[cyclone]

Title: hashgen
Author: cyclone
URL: https://github.com/cyclone-github/hashgen
Description: hashgen - the blazingly fast hash generator

hashgen - Cyclone's hash generator

$ hashgen -m md5 -w rockyou.txt -b
2025/08/23 19:18:27 Starting...
2025/08/23 19:18:27 Processing file: rockyou.txt
2025/08/23 19:18:27 Hash function: md5
2025/08/23 19:18:27 CPU Threads: 16
2025/08/23 19:18:28 Finished processing 14344391 lines in 0.465 sec (30.839 M lines/sec)

As of the this writing, hashgen (go) has a 2,519% faster md5 hashrate vs the next fastest publicly available CPU based hash generator (see benchmarks). While this is extremely fast, these hashrates can be beat by improved code optimization and/or coding in faster programming languages (I'm looking at you C, Rust and Zig).

Since version v2023-10-30.1600, hashgen has a top recorded hasharate of 30,228,048 md5/sec on the test rig's Ryzen 7 3700X CPU! Much faster hashrates have been seen on higher end CPU's.

Hashgen is a CLI hash generator written in Go and can be cross compiled for Linux, Raspberry Pi, Windows & Mac, although testing and compiling is mainly done on debian 12 linux.

To use hashgen, type your mode, wordlist input & hash output files with a simple command line.

Features:

• Maintains original input order PR 10
• Supports 58+ modes/functions (see list below)
• Encode / decode base64 & base58
• Hex / dehex wordlists
• Supports ASCII, UTF-8 and $HEX[] input
• Supports UTF-8 (default) or $HEX[] output
• Supports multiple salted modes such as -m 110 / -m 120

Useage Examples	Command Line
read wordlist.txt, hash to md5 and write to output.txt	./hashgen -m md5 -w wordlist.txt -o output.txt
pipe wordlist into hashgen and write to stdout	cat wordlist.txt | ./hashgen -m md5
decode $HEX[] wordlist to plaintext	./hashgen -m plaintext -w hex_wordlist.txt
convert wordlist to $HEX[]	./hashgen -m hex -w wordlist.txt
output hash:plain	./hashgen -m md5 -w wordlist.txt -hashplain
benchmark md5	./hashgen -m md5 -w wordlist.txt -b

Supported Options:

Flag:	Description:
-m	{mode}
-w	{wordlist input}
-t	{cpu threads}
-o	{wordlist output}
-b	{benchmark mode}
-cost	{bcrypt}
-hashplain	{generates hash:plain pairs}
-help	{help menu}
-version	{version info}

Supported Functions:

Function:	Hashcat Mode:
Plaintext & Encoding
plaintext / dehex	99999 (decode $HEX[])
hex	(encode to $HEX[])
base64encode
base64decode
base58encode
base58decode
morsecode	(ITU-R M.1677-1)
Checksums
crc32
11500	(hashcat compatible CRC32)
crc64
MDx
md4	900
md5	0
md5passsalt	10
md5saltpass	20
md5md5	2600
SHA1
sha1	100
sha1passsalt	110
sha1saltpass	120
sha1sha1	4500
SHA2
sha224	1300
sha224passsalt	1310
sha224saltpass	1320
sha256	1400
sha256passsalt	1410
sha256saltpass	1420
sha384	10800
sha384passsalt	10810
sha384saltpass	10820
sha512	1700
sha512passsalt	1710
sha512saltpass	1720
sha512-224
sha512-256
SHA3
sha3-224	17300
sha3-256	17400
sha3-384	17500
sha3-512	17600
Keccak
keccak-224	17700
keccak-256	17800
keccak-384	17900
keccak-512	18000
BLAKE2
blake2b-256
blake2b-384
blake2b-512
600	(hashcat compatible blake2b-512)
blake2s-256
31000	(hashcat compatible blake2s-256)
Other Hashes
ripemd-160	6000
mysql5	300
ntlm	1000
Crypt / KDF
argon2id	34000
bcrypt	3200
wpbcrypt	(WordPress HMAC-SHA384 + bcrypt)
md5crypt	500 (Linux shadow $1$)
sha256crypt	7400 (Linux shadow $5$)
sha512crypt	1800 (Linux shadow $6$)
phpass	400 (PHP/WordPress $P$/phpBB3 $H$)
yescrypt	(Linux shadow $y$)

Benchmarks:

• https://github.com/cyclone-github/hashgen-testing/tree/main/benchmarks
• In addition to hashgen (go), I have also written hashgen in python, php, C, and Rust, although Rust and C need a lot of work to unlock their full performance potential. If you speak C or Rust, I'd be curious to see how fast you can push hashgen!
  • https://github.com/cyclone-github/hashgen-testing

Compile hashgen from source:

• If you want the latest features, compiling from source is the best option since the release version may run several revisions behind the source code.
• This assumes you have Go and Git installed
  • git clone https://github.com/cyclone-github/hashgen.git # clone repo
  • cd hashgen # enter project directory
  • go mod init hashgen # initialize Go module (skips if go.mod exists)
  • go mod tidy # download dependencies
  • go build -ldflags="-s -w" . # compile binary in current directory
  • go install -ldflags="-s -w" . # compile binary and install to $GOPATH
• Compile from source code how-to:
  • https://github.com/cyclone-github/scripts/blob/main/intro_to_go.txt

Changelog:

• https://github.com/cyclone-github/hashgen/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md

Mentions:

• Go Package Documentation: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/cyclone-github/hashgen
• hashcat wiki: https://hashcat.net/wiki/
• hashkiller forum: https://forum.hashkiller.io/index.php?threads/cyclone-hashgen.63140/
• hashpwn forum: https://forum.hashpwn.net/post/89
• MajorGeeks: https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/hashgen.html
• Softpedia: https://www.softpedia.com/get/System/File-Management/hashgen-go.shtml

Antivirus False Positives:

• Several antivirus programs on VirusTotal incorrectly detect hashgen as a false positive. This issue primarily affects the Windows executable binary, but is not limited to it. If this concerns you, I recommend carefully reviewing hashgen's source code, then proceed to compile the binary yourself.
• Uploading your compiled hashgen binaries to https://virustotal.com and leaving an upvote or a comment would be helpful.

Thoughts:

• Why write hashgen? hashgen is nothing new (to me) as this project started several years ago while needing a way to quickly convert wordlists to md5 or sha1 on linux terminal. Several versions of hashgen have been written over the years in several languages: python, php, Go, C and Rust. While the actively maintained version is hashgen (go), which offers enhanced features and superior performance, the "hashgen-testing" repository linked below contains testing versions of hashgen in different programming languages:
  • https://github.com/cyclone-github/hashgen-testing
• Why write hashgen in Go instead of xyz language? I did this to push my Go coding skills while also seeing how fast I could push Go. During early testing, I was not expecting hashgen to be all that fast, but I have been pleasantly surprised!
• When I realized hashgen (go) was competitively fast compared to other publicly available hash generators, I decided to publish hashgen's code and binaries for others to use. I've really enjoyed this project and I hope you find it useful.
• If you found hashgen to be helpful, please consider giving this repository a star!

[cyclone]

New version of hashgen published.
https://github.com/cyclone-github/hashgen/releases/tag/v1.1.0

Changelog:
v1.1.0; 2025-03-19
added modes: base58, argon2id, bcrypt w/custom cost factor

[cyclone]

New version of hashgen published.

Changelog:
v1.1.1; 2025-03-20
added mode: yescrypt https://github.com/cyclone-github/yescrypt_crack
tweaked read/write buffers for per-CPU thread

[cyclone]

hashgen v1.1.2 update:

In the tradition of keeping hashgen blazingly fast, I published an optimized implementation of base58 to GitHub:
https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/cyclone-github/base58

Switching hashgen's base58 encode/decode logic to cyclone/base58 gave a performance increase of 500%.

Key features of this base58 package:

• Backwards compatible with other base58 packages using a familiar API based on Go's stdlib encoding/base64
• Written in pure Go using stdlib with no external dependencies
• Fast, efficient byte-based encoding/decoding

[cyclone]

New version of hashgen published.
https://github.com/cyclone-github/hashgen/releases/tag/v1.1.3

v1.1.3; 2025-06-30
added mode "hex" for $HEX[] formatted output
added alias "dehex" to "plaintext" mode
improved "plaintext/dehex" logic to decode both $HEX[] and raw base-16 input

[cyclone]

https://github.com/cyclone-github/hashgen/releases/tag/v1.1.4

v1.1.4; 2025-08-23
added modes: keccak-224, keccak-384, blake2b-256, blake2b-384, blake2b-512, blake2s-256
added benchmark flag, -b (to benchmark current mode, disables output)
compiled with Go v1.25.0 which gives a small performance boost to multiple algos
added notes concerning some NTLM hashes not being crackable with certain hash cracking tools due to encoding gremlins

[cyclone]

As an experimental POC, I rewrote hashgen v1.2.0-dev in Rust. This is a major update to the previous hashgen (Rust) released in 2024 and includes most of the features in hashgen (Go) v1.2.0-dev. Consider this experimental and not for production.

https://github.com/cyclone-github/hashgen-testing/tree/main/hashgen_rust

hashgen (Rust)

$ ./hashgen.bin --version
hashgen v1.2.0-rust
https://github.com/cyclone-github/hashgen

$ ./hashgen.bin -m md5 -w rockyou.txt -b
Starting...
Processing file: rockyou.txt
Hash function: md5
CPU Threads: 16
Finished processing 14344390 lines in 0.453 sec (31.639 M lines/sec)

hashgen (Go)

$ hashgen -version
hashgen v1.2.0-dev; 2025-09-20.2300
https://github.com/cyclone-github/hashgen

$ hashgen -m md5 -w rockyou.txt -b
2025/09/23 17:29:51 Starting...
2025/09/23 17:29:51 Processing file: rockyou.txt
2025/09/23 17:29:51 Hash function: md5
2025/09/23 17:29:51 CPU Threads: 16
2025/09/23 17:29:52 Finished processing 14344391 lines in 0.437 sec (32.792 M lines/sec)